A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, played, heard, observed, worn, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here.

What: “Jeff Northrup’s Depressing Red Sox Home Page” web site.

Address: www.tiac.net/users/northrup/baseball.html

If Carl Pavano pitches the Montreal Expos into the 2001 World Series and Pedro Martinez goes 10-15 in his one and only season in Boston before bolting for free agency, maybe Tuesday’s Red Sox-Expos deal will one day crop up here, under the heading “Worst Trades Ever (How Stupid Can They Be?)”

Then, depressed Red Sox fans will be able to “Rate The Stupidity” and compare the infamous Pavano giveaway to other grievous blunders of the past as they vote for the “Red Sox personnel move [that] was the stupidest.”

Contenders already on the ballot:

* Jeff Bagwell to Houston for Larry Andersen: “Hey, cheer up, Bagwell’s only been MVP once since then.”

* Cecil Cooper to Milwaukee for “a very old and very fat George Scott and a never-was Bernie Carbo.”

* Sparky Lyle to the Yankees for Danny Cater: “Two hundred and what saves?”

* Bill Lee to Montreal for Stan Papi: “AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGH.”

If those aren’t depressing enough, Red Sox fans can drag themselves over to “moments in Red Sox history even more depressing than the current state of affairs”--which includes the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees (“I can hardly talk about this man without crying!”) and Bucky Dent’s Red Sox-killing home run in the one-game playoff of 1978 (“I abhor this man and all he stands for!”)

Jeff Northrup, creator and curator of this pessimist’s paradise (subtitled: “79 Years and Still Counting,”) promised to post results of the Worst Trade poll “on the June update,” but the site reports it hasn’t been updated since May 26. Maybe he was too depressed.